


Things Not Lost

by TinCanTelephone



Series: From Tumblr, With <3 [14]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Everyone's angsty, F/M, Feelings, Hopeful Ending, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, and sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 19:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15080069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinCanTelephone/pseuds/TinCanTelephone
Summary: Jyn struggles with everything the war has taken from her. She thinks Cassian struggles with it too, although they don't know how to talk about it.





	Things Not Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloriouswhisperstyphoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/gifts).



> For @gloriouswhisperstyphoon's prompt on tumblr: "Oh, monsters are scared. That's why they're monsters."
> 
> She tells my poorly-read ass that this is a Neil Gaiman quote and after a little while of being confused, I eventually came up with this. The exact quote never shows up, but I tried to incorporate what I felt was the idea.

_“His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is. Where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. And would he not rather have stayed there. … War will make corpses of us all.” – Faramir of Gondor, The Two Towers [[x](https://youtu.be/FWUbS00vqEI)]_  


 

* * *

 

The first time Jyn saw a stormtrooper’s face, she was ten years old. She’d been with Saw for nearly two years, and she got curious. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Saw hadn’t let her fight in the skirmish, but she snuck out while most of the partisans were pillaging the warehouse they’d just taken.

She had to brace her leg on his shoulder to work the helmet off, but it came away after a bit of tugging. She didn’t look at first, just stared at the helmet in her hands and panted. Her heart was suddenly pounding in her throat and she wondered if this was such a good idea after all. Back then, it was hard for her to articulate why this might be a mistake. She’d seen bodies before– she’d seen her  _mother’s_ – but this was somehow different.

She still remembers his face with perfect clarity. The first thing she noticed was that his eyes were open. They were bright blue and she jumped, because at first she thought he wasn’t really dead. Then she leaned closer and saw the pallor of his face and how he wasn’t blinking, just staring straight into the Maridun sun above them. His hair was blonde and buzzed close to his skull and his lips were parted, almost like he was surprised. He’d died of a blaster wound to his chest, and she could see flecks of blood on his lips when she peered close.

That’s when Saw found her. He yanked her upright by her bicep and dragged her away. She fought, but his grip was like durasteel and he ignored her whining pleas. He brought her back to their ship and thrust her onto a bench seat.

She glared up at him in petulant, childish defiance. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

Saw looked down at her, stern and unmoving.

Jyn held his gaze, although she felt shame rise in her face as she waited for him to speak.

Finally, he said,“I think you understand what you did.” Then he turned and left her on the ship.

He didn’t let her leave it for the rest of the mission.

 

It’s not the last stormtrooper face Jyn ever saw, but it’s the last one she saw on purpose. Every other time was by mistake, because she understands now. She knows better than look into the eyes of her enemy. 

In her worst dreams, that first stormtrooper’s face appears again and again. And he’s never wearing armor, and his hair is always longer (not Imperial regulation). He’s usually younger, and never alone. He has a family. People who loved him. People who missed him. People who will never see him again, who will probably never know that he died alone in a field in the Outer Rim, killed by a guerrilla fighter who wanted to steal some rations.

She thinks sometimes that Stormtroopers shouldn’t wear armor at all, because it would be so much harder to kill them if they didn’t.

 

* * *

 

It shouldn’t surprise Jyn when, on the second night she spends with him, Cassian wakes up panting and shaking and can’t get back to sleep. She doesn’t ask what he was dreaming of, and doesn’t try to comfort him. No one’s ever said anything to her that eased the pain and shame of re-living the act of taking a life, so she doesn’t try. She pretends to be asleep, and eventually feels him slip out of bed and leave. 

Even though it’s his room, he never returns and she doesn’t see him until breakfast. She doesn’t ask how he is or where he’s been. She decides it’s not her business. Later, she learns from Bodhi that a private found him that morning, slumped over a table in an empty conference room with his datapad still on.

“Perhaps… you should talk to him about it?” Bodhi says, picking at a thread on his sleeve and eyes skirting around the hangar. The scars on his temples from the Bor Gullet stand out in the harsh white light. 

Jyn shrugs, peers more closely at the underbelly of the A-wing they’re re-wiring. “He wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

“How do you know?” Bodhi says. 

Jyn shrugs again. “It’s a feeling.”

“So you haven’t tried.”

She pushes out from under the ship and frowns at him. 

He flinches and a muscle in his leg jumps. 

“No,” she says. That’s not their relationship, she thinks. It’s not that simple– to examine with someone else the unthinkable things you’ve done. She and Cassian don’t talk about that. They aren’t good at talking to begin with. 

 

“When’re you shipping out?” she says when his datapad pings that night with a fourth update from Draven.

“48 hours,” he says without looking up. “Few more things to do tomorrow.” He taps out a reply, then puts it aside and joins her on the bed. 

She shuffles to make room for him and he curls around her, one hand so light on her shoulder she can almost imagine it isn’t there. Sometimes she wishes he weren’t so gentle, that he’d cling to her like he'll never let go

But she understands why he might not want to. The galaxy is unforgiving. If they want this too badly, it will only hurt more when it’s taken from them. 

 

* * *

 

He’s careless the next morning. She thinks he didn’t sleep well, although he didn’t wake her up this time. But he’s running late for something, and he leaves his datapad unlocked when he steps into the sonic. She leans up on her elbows to look at it, and she can see the label blinking on the silenced alarm. 

_Psych Eval Deck F Room 2101_

The sonic shuts off and she snaps to her position before, pretends like she’s just waking up when he returns and gets dressed. 

He nods at her from the doorway. “See you later.”

“See you.“ 

She rises as soon as the door is closed. She can’t lie around in the dark thinking about Cassian’s ghosts as well as her own. She pulls on yesterday’s clothes and heads to the training room, where she tries to exhaust herself into a state of numbness. She lets her vision tunnel and focuses on the feel of the sandbag in front of her, the sweat beading on her forehead and pooling in the creases of her skin. 

Bodhi meets her in the hangar after lunch and they don’t talk about Cassian, although she knows he wants to. Every once in a while, he opens his mouth as if to speak, then meets her eyes and closes it again, or says something else she knows he doesn’t mean to say. 

“…What do you think of the new breakfast rations?”

Neither of them give two shavits about the food. 

“Do I connect this wire to the red one or the yellow one?”

He knows where the wires go better than she does. 

They’re nearly done and she’s taking a breather, wiping the grease from her hands when he finally finds the courage. “Have you seen Cassian today?”

“Not since this morning,” she says, heart pounding in case Bodhi comments (again) on the fact that they’re sharing a bed. 

“I mean since his… appointment.”

Bodhi knows about that? She looks up slowly, the rag forgotten in her palms. 

“Mine was right after his. I saw him leave.”

“Why do you ask?” Jyn says carefully. 

“I was just wondering if he told you.”

“Told me what?” Her heart’s slowly turning to ice, because Bodhi looks too concerned for the news to be good.

“I- I’m not sure I should say…” He shifts under her gaze and rubs his palms on his thighs.

“Told me. What?” She steps forward. She hates intimidating him, and feels guilty for it in the back of her mind, but she can’t help it now. He has to tell her what he knows.

Bodhi flinches. “He failed it. Intel's pulling him from field missions indefinitely.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I’m sorry!” Bodhi says. “I thought he’d tell you.”

_I thought he would, too_. “Thanks,” Jyn says, before throwing the greasy towel on the ground and storming out of the hangar. 

She doesn’t know where she’s going at first. She’d like to go to command and punch Draven in the face– because even though he’s the one pulling Cassian from missions, he’s also the one who pushed him this far to begin with. 

But she doesn’t go to the bridge, because no matter what he thinks, Cassian needs her first. 

 

The droid bay is musty and dark– it smells of rust and metal and feels like a prison, which is why Jyn rarely goes there. But she understands why Cassian might like it, aside from his fondness for tinkering and programming. The room is a perfect rectangle, only four corners, but so cluttered so he can easily have his back against three “walls” and maintain eyes on the entire room. 

He’s in his usual place, amidst an array of K-X parts and several approximations. His hands are in the back of a heavily scratched chassis attached to an ill-fitting head with stubbornly dull eyes. He barely looks up when she approaches. 

“Bodhi’s bad at keeping secrets,” she says. 

“Is he.”

“Who’s going to Carida instead?”

“Lieutenant Oswell.”

“Do you know why?”

He puts down a macrosander and looks up. “We don’t have to discuss it.”

“We do.” She sits down in front of him. She won’t let him push her away again. “I don’t care if you don’t want to.”

An emotion she can’t quite place flickers across his face. “And  _you_  do?”

“I think it’s important.” She’s not quite sure why yet, but there’s something itching in the back of her mind she has to tell him. 

He looks back at the droid. “It’s not.”

She leans across the workbench. “Why, Cassian?”

He shakes his head. “They think I can’t do my job.”

“They think you  _shouldn’t_  do your job.”

“Same thing.”

“It’s not.” Jyn pushes aside the K-X chassis sitting in between them and takes the tools from his hands. “Cassian, why did the psychologist fail you?”

“‘Excessive mental strain.’” He snorts. “Nonsense."

“How much did you sleep last night?”

“Irrelevant.”

“How much?”

“Three hours.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It is for me.” He tries to pull the chassis back between them.

“No.” She stops him, and her hand falls on his. They both freeze, and in a moment of courage, she turns his hand over and holds their palms together. He doesn’t pull away, and Jyn looks down at their hands. She tries to let the contact center her, organize her thoughts so she can find what she wants to say. “Cassian… I think this is good.” She feels his arm go stiff, grips his hand tighter. 

“It’s not,” he says. “It means I can’t shake it off.” He’s looking down at his lap, and she can see he’s trying to hide his face. His mask is slipping.

“I’d be worried if you could,” she says. 

“You would?”

“ _Yes_.” She leans farther forward, trying to catch his eyes. She knows what she wants to say now. “It’s  _good_  that you can’t brush it off. It’s  _good_  that you… feel something, after everything you’ve had to do.”

He flinches, but she keeps going.

“When you become numb to it,” she says, “you’ll start to lose yourself.” 

He finally meets her eyes and she holds them.

“And I don’t think you’re lost yet, Cassian.” She watches his throat move as he swallows. His eyes look shinier, although it could be the light. 

“Are you sure?” he whispers. 

She runs her thumb over his knuckles, feeling and cataloging every ridge and scar. Someday, she’ll remind him of all the good his hands have done, and maybe she’ll remind him how human it is– to have done good things and bad things and to carry all the scars from both. And how it human it is to feel compassion for those you’re supposed to hate. 

But not right now. Right now, she curls her fingers around his hand again, reminds him that she’s here and he can hold onto her if he wants. “I’m sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Original Tumblr Post](https://cats-and-metersticks.tumblr.com/post/174876801950/for-my-second-prompt-oh-monsters-are-scared)
> 
> I don't know what happened- even when I try to write about Jyn it ends up being about Cassian…
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you so much for reading/comments/kudos! They make me smile :) 
> 
> I'm on tumblr, too- [cats-and-metersticks](https://cats-and-metersticks.tumblr.com/) \- Check it out for fic previews and cat pics :)


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